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Searchers for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet 'wasted a week' by failing to focus their efforts on the Indian Ocean earlier, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul said on 'Fox News Sunday'.

McCaul says plane's searchers 'wasted a week'

By ERIC BRADNER

03/23/2014 09:25 AM EDT

Searchers for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet “wasted a week” by failing to focus their efforts on the Indian Ocean earlier, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul says.

The Texas Republican complained on “Fox News Sunday” that Malaysian officials “spent way too much time” looking in the Gulf of Thailand and in the mountains of Kazakhstan, when they should have been searching in the Indian Ocean.

“We wasted a week of precious time at the mountain region when all along it’s been in the southern Indian Ocean, is where the location is,” McCaul said.

His comments came after French authorities provided new satellite images that officials said show debris that could have come from the airplane in the ocean west of Australia.

“The good news is we’ve confined it to the area where the debris is so we can get to the black box to finally find out what may have happened in this case,” he said.

McCaul said he believes it’s “less likely” that the plane landed on a runway on a remote island. “However, we haven’t ruled out terrorism,” he said, adding that there is no direct evidence of such a link.